Straight from the hip I shoot with my best writing taking the air like tender meat. There's always something to be said for vulnerability, but who has the time, much less the desire to throw yourself in a frying pan? I do. And so it is...
It's raining tonight on these streets where it never fucking rains, and there's plenty of piss and shit to be washed away on these brick-lined avenues. Sickly enough, both literally and figuratively. You see, Cinderella's pumpkin turns into a festering gourd here from time to time, but much more infrequent than it did in the paper city just North of the Trinity River...where I lost my mind...in all it's filthy bronze elegance. So I think I can readily take this in stride and somehow manage. Life works in cycles, and we're all in this together, right? Sure.
.22 bullets used to fly like single-file flocks of albatross in the stratoshpere when I was younger. My aim was true out there, back then. Always.
That little town, Rochelle, which burned down in a white hot sunstream when it was up for county seat in the late 1800's. It had the disgrace of not being named after a famous Texas, slave-owning general. It lost because the rail head and locomotives gave Brady (Mister Peter Brady) the jurisprudence to govern the small county in which I was raised (Confederate General Ben McCulloch), but my ancestors pulled for their territory. It was a few votes short (despite 22% living below the Brady poverty line, but who knows that, and more importantly, who seems to care? That's another clothesline for another afternoon).
The Hill Country never looks sweeter than it does between our homeland and San Saba County. Lilly Mae saw it, but she didn't pay much care though...with her French-styled counters and ice-cream offerings for every child-like humanoid that passed through those arched doors. She was there because God, or the universe, or some force of nature told her to be there. 50 cents on the dollar was her standard price, and a smile and handshake was all it took to make a transaction. She was as beautiful as those hills, and her smile was welcoming like the big oak shade trees. Commerce still found her on any day, sunny or overcast. Sodas and nails, soups and flour, cash...no credit...but she held tabs.
I can still pick out the exact trees where my mother used to escape those she was surrounded by and lose herself in Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dostoevsky. There's a strong "V-split" in a tree about 200 yards South of the ranch house...next to the crumbling livestock barns, where she would sit for hours and educate herself from herself about the world that she hadn't seen. Away from her brothers, and away from the chaos that filled that little rock-lined, hand-made house. Hours she would sit and take the Hill Country, and inspired words, in like a sponge, and she felt free and near God, or something more significant than what she'd seen. It was the same draw from her chest that pulled me to sink a cross made of cedar-posts about three feet deep into the ground where nobody ventures. It's where I thought I might find the most appropriate place to talk to God. He hasn't disagreed with the placement. Not yet anyways.
Someone once stumbled upon it, and questioned it's existence in a way that spoke of inquisitive despondence, but I never gave a fuck about those who inquired about the time I spent on my knees. I pray there when seas get rough. I pray there when skies are blue. I pray there when passing by, and I pray there when I feel inclined. I like to think she did the same in her own place. In fact, I know she did. I know of two trees that hold significance to her that she's never shared with anyone in her family. That is a mother/son conversation...and I inherited my mother's sentimentality. Thank heaven for it all...and damn it all. It's wrecked me and saved me. But mostly saved me.
I remember Mathews Grocery, before they tore it down with the mid-sized wrecking ball. There was a wicked, black 1990 Ford Ranger for sale out front that I coveted a few years before my legal driving age. But they tore her store down after she passed, like the world tears down our history, and consequently our innocence. America shreds it's history like a failed document in a corporate conference room. Ashamedly so. But nothing could've supported the belfry in that building. It was beyond it's time, and heavier than most. Like most everyone I know...myself included.
She used to sit behind the counter, serving sandwiches and smiles like a gypsy, enjoying her time pulled from the killing fields. Sent a couple of her sons over in planes made of bailing wire and super-glue to fight for Europe. Her store sat before our little parcel of land on the highway leading there, and it was always the halftime show during day-long work trips that sat more like dread as mold on wet carpet to a young boy, or glorious afternoons yanking fish out of our ponds with my father and little sister.
I drink whiskey, like my grandfather...like my sister does. It's in our blood.
You try and follow your heart, and if you're serious, you're not disappointed if it leads to complete and utter madness. In fact, you should welcome it if it beckons. The fire burns anything it wants. It's up to you to put it out or fuel it. Nobody else. It's not done for you. I think that's one of the strangest things.
Ahh, Mr. Guthrie, say it ain't so...
There's a black wind blowing through the cotton fields baby. I sit here with my unfortunate old soul, delightfully anachronistic. Sarcastically smiling where nobody understands but me.
Nothing seems to be more important in this life than understanding who you are. Nothing has shown me that it is.
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